From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Jul 28 2009 - 05:19:36 EDT
"Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order"
Part-I
Review of F. William Engdahl's book
by Stephen Lendman
http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures/14046.jpg.
<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, June 27, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14046> &aid=14046
For over 30 years, F. William Engdahl has been a leading researcher,
economist, and analyst of the New World Order with extensive writing to his
credit on energy, politics, and economics. He contributes regularly to
business and other publications, is a frequent speaker on geopolitical,
economic and energy issues, and is a distinguished Research Associate of the
Centre for Research on Globalization.
Engdahl's two previous books include "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New World Order" explaining that America's post-WW II
dominance rests on two pillars and one commodity - unchallengeable military
power and the dollar as the world's reserve currency along with the quest to
control global oil and other energy resources.
Engdahl's other book is titled "Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of
Genetic Manipulation" on how four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan
world domination by patenting all life forms to force-feed GMO foods on
everyone - even though eating them poses serious human health risks.
Engdahl's newest book is reviewed below. Titled "Full Strectrum Dominance:
Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order," it discusses America's grand
strategy, first revealed in the 1998 US Space Command document - Vision for
2020. Later released in 2000 as DOD Joint Vision 2020, it called for "full
spectrum dominance" over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space,
electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming
power to fight and win global wars against any adversary, including with
nuclear weapons preemptively.
Other means as well, including propaganda, NGOs and Color Revolutions for
regime change, expanding NATO eastward, and "a vast array of psychological
and economic warfare techniques" as part of a "Revolution in Military
Affairs" discussed below.
September 11, 2001 served as pretext to consolidate power, destroy civil
liberties and human rights, and wage permanent wars against invented enemies
for global dominance over world markets, resources, and cheap labor - at the
expense of democratic freedoms and social justice. Engdahl's book presents a
frightening view of the future, arriving much sooner than most think.
Introduction
After the Soviet Union's dissolution in late 1989, America had a choice. As
the sole remaining superpower, it could have worked for a new era of peace
and prosperity, ended decades of Cold War tensions, halted the insane arms
race, turned swords into plowshares, and diverted hundreds of billions
annually from "defense" to "rebuild(ing) civilian infrastructure and
repair(ing) impoverished cities."
Instead, Washington, under GHW Bush and his successors, "chose stealth,
deception, lies and wars to attempt to control the Eurasian Heartland - its
only potential rival as an economic region - by military (political, and
economic) force," and by extension planet earth through an agenda later
called "full spectrum dominance."
As a result, the Cold War never ended and today rages with over a trillion
dollars spent annually on "defense" in all forms even though America has no
enemy, nor did it after the Japanese surrendered in August 1945. So the
solution was to invent them, and so they were.
Post-Soviet Russia, "The 'new' Cold War assumed various disguises and
deceptive tactics until September 11, 2001" changed the game. It let George
Bush "declare (a) permanent (Global War on Terror) against an enemy who was
everywhere and nowhere, who allegedly threatened the American way of life,
justified (police state) laws," and is now destroying our freedoms and
futures.
The roots of the scheme go back decades - at least to 1939 when powerful New
York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) insiders planned a post-war world
with one nation alone triumphant and unchallengeable.
Engdahl's book is a geopolitical analysis of the past two decades - peering
into "the dark corners of Pentagon strategy and actions and the extreme
dangers ('full spectrum dominance' holds for) the future," not just to
America but the entire world.
Things are so out-of-control today that democratic freedoms and planetary
life itself are threatened by "the growing risk of nuclear war by
miscalculation" or the foolhardy assumption that waging it can be limited,
controlled, and safe - like turning a faucet on and off. The very notion is
implausible and reckless on its face, yet powerful forces in the country
think this way and plan accordingly.
The Guns of August 2008
On the 8th day of the 8th month of the 8th year of the new century, a place
few people in the West ever heard of made headlines when Georgia's army
invaded South Ossetia - its province that broke away in 1991 and declared
its independence. For a brief period, world tensions were more heightened
than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when only cooler heads
avoided possible nuclear war.
Like then, the crisis was a Washington provocation with tiny Georgia a mere
pawn in a dangerous high-stakes confrontation - a new Great Game that former
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described in his 1997 book,
"The Grand Chessboard."
He called Eurasia the "center of world power extending from Germany and
Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the
Middle East and the Indian subcontinent." He explained that America's urgent
task was to assure that "no state or combination of states gains the
capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish
significantly its decisive arbitration role." Dominating that part of the
world is key to controlling the planet, and its the main reason for NATO's
existence. From inception, its mission was offense.
Post-Cold War, Washington used the illusion of democracy to dominate
everywhere - with the long arm of the Pentagon and NATO as enforcers.
Euphoric East Europeans couldn't know that American-style democracy was even
more repressive than what had ended. Decades of Voice of America and Radio
Free Europe propaganda was soon revealed to be no different than the Soviet
system they rejected and in some ways much worse.
Western-imposed "shock therapy" meant "free market" hokum, mass
privatizations, ending the public sphere, unrestricted access for foreign
corporations unemcumbered by pesky regulations, deep social service cuts,
loss of job security, poverty wages, repressive laws, and entire economies
transformed to benefit a powerful corporate ruling class partnered with
corrupted political elites. Globally, Russia got billionaire "oligarchs,"
China "the princelings," Chile "the piranhas," and in new millennium America
the Bush-Cheney "Pioneers" and Obama Wall Street Top Guns wrecking global
havoc for self-enrichment.
As for ordinary people, Russia is instructive for what's heading everywhere:
-- mass impoverishment;
-- an epidemic of unemployment;
-- loss of pensions and social benefits;
-- 80% of farmers bankrupted;
-- tens of thousands of factories closed and the country de-industrialized;
-- schools closed;
-- housing in disrepair;
-- skyrocketing alcoholism, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, suicides, and violent
crime; and
-- a declining population and life expectancy because the country was looted
for profit and all safety nets ended; what Milton Friedman called "freedom."
Mikhail Gorvachev tried to revitalize Soviet Russia with Glasnost and
Perestroika but failed. In return for agreeing to "shock therapy" and
nuclear disarmament, GHW Bush promised no eastward NATO extension into newly
liberated Warsaw Pact countries. The Russian Duma, in fact, ratified Start
II, providing a firm disarmament schedule - contingent on both countries
prohibiting a missile defense deployment as stipulated under the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM).
On December 14, 2001, the Bush administration withdrew from ABM and much
more. It claimed the right to develop and test new nuclear weapons (in
violation of NPT), rescinded the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention,
greatly increased military spending, refused to consider a Fissile Material
Cutoff Treaty to increase already large stockpiles, and claimed the right to
wage preventive wars under the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" using
first-strike nuclear weapons.
The door was now open for enhanced militarization, creation of the US
Missile Defense Agency, and proof again that trusting America is foolhardy
and dangerous. Both GHW Bush and Bill Clinton lied by enticing former Warsaw
Pact countries into NATO, one by one.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski described America's
arrogance this way:
"Presidential travels abroad assumed the trappings of imperial expeditions,
overshadowing in scale and security demands the circumstances of any other
statesman (reflecting) America's anointment as the world's leader (to be) in
some respects reminiscent of Napoleon's self-coronation."
Brzezinski understood the dangers of imperial arrogance, causing the decline
and fall of previous empires. Even a superpower like the US is vulnerable.
He was very comfortable with an American Century, only leery of the means to
achieve and keeping it. In 2008, with 28 NATO country members, including 10
former Warsaw Pact ones, Washington sought admission for Georgia and
Ukraine, and did so after announcing in early 2007 the planned installation
of interceptor missiles in Poland and advanced tracking radar in the Czech
Republic, both NATO members.
Allegedly for defense against Iran and other "rogue" states, it clearly
targeted Russia by guaranteeing America a nuclear first-strike edge, and
that provoked a sharp Kremlin response. Washington's deployment is for
offense as are all US/NATO installations globally.
Vladimir Putin expressed outrage in his February 2007 Munich International
Conference on Security address stating:
"NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders. (It) does not have any
relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring
security in Europe. On the contrary, it represent a serious provocation that
reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have a right to ask: against whom
is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western
partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?"
Putin's speech drew a storm of US media Russia-bashing. Last August, it got
this writer to comment in an article titled "Reinventing the Evil Empire,"
saying: Russia is back, proud and re-assertive, and not about to roll over
for America, especially in Eurasia. For Washington, it's back to the future
with a new Cold War, but this time for greater stakes and with much larger
threats to world peace.
Over the past two decades, Washington upped the ante, encroaching on
Russia's borders and encircling it with NATO/US bases clearly designed for
offense and to block the spread of democratic freedoms to former Soviet
Republics. "Diabolical propaganda" made it work by projecting imperial
America as a colonial liberator bringing "free market" capitalism to the
East. It succeeded as "long as the United States was the world's largest
economy and American dollars were in demand as (the) de facto world reserve
currency...." For decades, America "portray(ed) itself as the beacon of
liberty for newly independent nations of Africa and Asia," as well as former
Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact nations.
Geopolitical Reality - America's New Manifest Destiny, Global Expansion to
the Vastness of Eurasia
For over a century, America sought "total economic and military control over
(Soviet) Russia" through the full strength of its
military-industrial-security sectors - by war or other means. From 1945, the
Pentagon planned a first-strike nuclear war, an "all out conventional war
(called) TOTALITY (as) drafted by General Dwight Eisenhower" per Harry
Truman's order, the same man who used atomic weapons against a defeated
Japan instead of accepting its requested surrender.
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, America's superpower supremacy
depends on "precluding Eurasian countries from developing their own defense
pillars or security structures independent of US-controlled NATO,"
especially to prevent a powerful China-Russia alliance capable of serious
challenge, along with other Eurasian states, notably oil rich ones.
As geopolitical strategist Halford Mackinder (1861 - 1947) observed in his
most famous dictum:
"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
Who rules the World-Island commands the World."
Mackinder's World-Island was Eurasia, all of Europe, the Middle East and
Asia.
Early in the last century and notably post-WW II, America determined to rule
even at the risk of all out nuclear war. For its part, Britain intended to
stay in the game, and in April 1945, Winston Churchill urged Dwight
Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt "to launch an immediate full-scale war
against the Soviet Union, using up to 12 captured German divisions (as)
cannon fodder to destroy Russia once and for all."
Instead, Washington invented a post-war enemy, and got Europe and Asian
countries to feel threatened enough to agree to US dictates, even ones
contrary to their own interests. As for America, in 1945, Truman ordered
Eisenhower "to prepare secret plans for a surprise nuclear strike on some
(Soviet) cities (despite knowing the Kremlin) posed no direct or immediate
threat to the United States" or its close allies.
A nuclear-armed Russia with intercontinental missile capabilities halted the
threat - until the 2001 Bush Doctrine asserted the right to wage preventive
wars, with first-strike nuclear weapons, to depose foreign regimes perceived
dangerous to US security and interests. That was the strategy behind the
2008 Georgian conflict that could have escalated into nuclear war.
Defused for the moment, "a number of leading US policy makers (see Russia
today) as unfinished business (and seek its) complete dismemberment (as) an
independent pivot for Eurasia." Nuclear superiority, encirclement, and
"diabolical propaganda" are three tools among others to finish the job and
leave America the sole remaining superpower. Disempowering Russia and China
will create an open field for a "total global American Century - the
realization of 'full spectrum dominance,' as the Pentagon called it."
Today, under Obama as under Bush, the risk of nuclear war by miscalculation
is highest in nearly half a century. With America the clear aggressor,
Russia may feel its only option is strike first while able or delay and face
the consequences when it's too late. The closer offensive nuclear missiles
are to its borders, the nearer it gets to disempowerment, further
dismemberment, and possible nuclear annihilation.
Its reaction left few doubts of its response. In February 2007, Strategic
Rocket Forces commander Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov said "Moscow would
target US Ballistic Missile Defense sites with its nuclear arsenal if
Washington" proceeded with its plans. Putin delivered harsh rhetoric and
announced Russia would spend $190 billion over the next eight years to
modernize its military by 2015 and that state-of-the-art weapons would take
precedence. His message was clear. A New Cold War/nuclear arms race was on
with Russia ready to contend "out of national survival considerations," not
a desire for confrontation.
"Missile Defense" for Offense
On March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan proposed the idea in a speech calling for
greater Cold War military spending, including a huge R & D program for what
became known as "Star Wars" - in impermeable anti-missile space shield
called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The idea then (and now) was
fantasy, but a glorious one for defense contractors who've profited hugely
ever since.
The Clinton administration gave it modest support until the National Missile
Defense Act of 1999 proposed an active missile defense "as soon as is
technologically possible...."
When George Bush became president, Donald Rumsfeld wanted war preparations
to include missile defense and space-based weapons to destroy targets
anywhere in the world quickly for "full spectrum dominance." The strategy
included "deployment of a revolutionary new technique of regime change to
impose or install 'US-friendly' regimes throughout the former Soviet Union
and across Eurasia."
Controlling Russia - Color Revolutions and Swarming Coups
"Swarming" is a RAND Corporation term referring to "communication patterns
and movement of" bees and other insects and applying it to military conflict
by other means. It plays out through covert CIA actions to overthrow
democratically elected governments, remove foreign leaders and key
officials, prop up friendly dictators, and target individuals anywhere in
the world.
Also through propaganda and activities of the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), and National
Democratic Institute (NDI) - posing as NGOs but, in fact, are US
government-funded organizations charged with subverting democracy, uprooting
it where it exists, or preventing its creation by criminally disruptive
means. Methods include non-violent strikes, mass street protests, and major
media agitprop for regime change - much like what's now playing out in Iran
after its presidential election.
Other recent examples include the Belgrade 2000 coup against Slobodan
Misosevic, Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution ousting Eduard Shevardnadze for
the US-installed stooge, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the 2004-05 Ukraine Orange
Revolution, based on faked electoral fraud, to install another Washington
favorite, Viktor Yushchenko. The idea is to isolate Russia by cutting off
its economic lifeline - the "pipeline networks that (carry its) huge
reserves of oil and natural gas from the Urals and Serbia to Western Europe
and Eurasia..." They run through Ukraine, a nation "so intertwined (with
Russia) economically, socially and culturally, especially in the east of the
country, that they were almost indistinguishable from one another."
Achieving geopolitical aims this way is far simpler and cheaper than waging
wars "while convincing the world (that regime change was the result of)
spontaneous outbursts for freedom. (It's) a dangerously effective weapon."
In 1953, cruder CIA methods toppled democratically elected Iranian Prime
Minister Mohammed Mossadegh - the agency's first successful coup d'etat to
install Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.
In 1954, it deposed the popularly elected Jacobo Arbenz and replaced him
with a military dictator - on the pretext of removing a non-existent
communist threat. Arbenz, like other targets, threatened US business
interests by favoring land reform, strong unions, and wealth distribution to
alleviate extreme poverty in their countries.
Short of war, various tactics aim to prevent them: "propaganda, stuffed
ballot boxes, bought elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false
stories about opponents in the local media, transportation strikes,
infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping,
beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even
assassination (culminating in) a military (or other coup to install) a
'pro-American' right-wing dictator" - while claiming it's democracy in
action. For decades, countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and other
world regions have been frequent victims.
Since the CIA's 1947 creation, "national security" and a fake communist
threat justified every imaginable crime from propaganda to economic warfare,
sabotage, assassinations, coup d'etats, torture, foreign wars and much more.
However, by the 1960s, new forms of covert regime change emerged along the
lines that RAND studies called "swarming" - the idea being to develop social
manipulation techniques or disruptive outbreaks short of wars or violent
uprisings. After 2000, as mentioned above, they played out in Central
Europe's Color Revolutions. According to State Department and intelligence
community officials, "It seemed to be the perfect model for eliminating
regimes opposed to US policy," whether or not popularly elected. Every
regime is now vulnerable to "new methods of warfare" by other means,
including economic ones very much in play now and earlier.
Organizations like the Gene Sharp Albert Einstein Institution, George Soros'
Open Society Foundation, Freedom House and others are very much involved,
and Sharp's web site admits being active with "pro-democracy" groups in
Burma, Thailand, Tibet, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, and Serbia.
They all conveniently "coincided with the US State Department's targets for
regime change over the same period."
Eurasian Pipeline Wars
Central to the current conflict is control of the region's vast oil and gas
reserves, and as long as Russia can use its resources "to win economic
allies in Western Europe, China, and elsewhere, it (can't) be politically
isolated." As a result, Moscow reacts harshly to military encirclement and
bordering Color Revolutions - hostile acts, the geopolitical equivalence of
war.
For America to remain the sole superpower, controlling global oil and gas
flows is crucial along with cutting off China from Caspian Sea reserves and
securing the energy routes and networks between Russia and the EU.
It's why America invaded and occupies Afghanistan and Iraq, incited Baltic
wars in the 1990s, attacked Kosovo and Serbia in 1999, threatens Iran
repeatedly and imposes sanctions, and keeps trying to oust Hugo Chavez. For
its part under Vladimir Putin, Russia's economy began to grow for the first
time in decades. It's rich in oil and gas, and uses them strategically to
gain influence enough to rival Washington, especially in alliance with China
and other former Soviet states like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan, united in the 2001-formed Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) with Iran and India having observer status.
Under Bush-Cheney, Washington reacted aggressively. "full spectrum
dominance" is the aim with Russia and China the main targets. Controlling
world energy resources is central, and nothing under Obama has changed.
Iraq's occupation continues and Afghanistan operations are enhanced with
increased troop deployments under newly appointed General Stanley
McChrystal's command - a hired gun, a man with a reputation for brutishness
that includes torture, assassinations, indifference to civilian deaths, and
willingness to destroy villages to save them.
As long as Russia and China stay free from US control, "full spectrum
dominance" is impossible. Encircling the former with NATO bases, Color
Revolutions, and incorporating former Soviet states into NATO and the EU are
all part of the same grand strategy - "deconstruct(ing) Russia once and for
all as a potential rival to a sole US Superpower hegemony."
Vladimir Putin stands in the way, "a dynamic nationalist (leader) committed
to rebuilding" his country. In 2003, a defining geopolitical event occurred
when Putin had billionaire oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, arrested on
charges of tax evasion and put his shares in giant Yukos Oil group under
state control.
It followed a decisive Russian Duma (lower house) election in which
Khodorkovsky "was reliably alleged" to have used his wealth for enough votes
to gain a majority - to challenge Putin in 2004 for president. Khodorkovsky
violated his pledge to stay out of politics in return for keeping his assets
and stolen billions provided he repatriate enough of them back home.
His arrest also came after a report surfaced about a meeting with Dick
Cheney in Washington, followed by others with ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco.
They discussed acquiring a major stake of up to 40% of Yukos or enough to
give Washington and Big Oil "de facto veto power over future Russian oil and
gas pipelines and oil deals." Khodorkovsky also met with GHW Bush and had
ties to the Carlyle Group, the influential US firm with figures like James
Baker one of its partners.
Had Exxon and Chevron consummated the deal, it would have been an "energy
coup d'etat. Cheney knew it; Bush knew it; Khodorkovsky knew it. Above all,
Vladimir Putin knew it and moved decisively to block it" and hit hard on
Khodorkosky in the process. It "signaled a decisive turn....towards
rebuilding Russia and erecting strategic defenses." By late 2004, Moscow
understood that a New Cold War was on over "strategic energy control and
unilateral nuclear primacy," and Putin moved from defense to a "new dynamic
offensive aimed at securing a more viable geopolitical position by using
(Russia's) energy as the lever."
It involves reclaiming Russia's oil and gas reserves given away by Boris
Yeltsin. Also strengthening and modernizing the country's military and
nuclear deterrent to enhance its long-term security. Russia remains a
military powerhouse and displays impressive technology at international
trade shows, including the S-300 and more powerful S-400, reportedly more
potent than comparable US systems.
Controlling China with Synthetic Democracy
>From the 1940s to today, America's China strategy has been "divide and
conquer," only tactics have varied from "big stick" to "carrot-and-stick"
diplomacy. Key is to keep Russia and China from cooperating economically and
militarily, "maintain a strategy of tension across Asia, and particularly
Eurasia" (that, of course includes the Middle East and its oil riches) - for
the overarching goal of total "control of China as the potential economic
colossus of Asia."
With America embroiled in Eurasian wars, policy now "masquerad(es) behind
the issues of human rights and 'democracy' as weapons of psychological and
economic warfare."
Another initiative as well is ongoing - the 2007 AFRICOM authorization, the
US Africa Command to control the continent's 53 countries no differently
than the rest of the world, using military force as necessary. China's
increasing need for Africa's resources (including oil), not terrorism, is
the reason.
The 2008 Army Modernization Strategy (AMS) focuses on "full spectrum
dominance," controlling world resources, and the prospect of wars for three
to four decades to secure them. China and Russia are most feared as serious
competitors - the former for its explosive economic growth and resource
requirements and the latter for its energy, other raw material riches, and
military strength.
AMS also included another threat - "population growth" threatening America
and the West with "radical ideologies" and hence instability as well as
unwanted "resource competition" that expanding economies require -
everything from food to water, energy and other raw materials. These issues
lay behind AFRCOM's creation and strategy for hardline militarism globally.
America's second president, John Adams, once said: "there are two ways to
conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt," or
more broadly economic warfare. With much of US manufacturing offshored in
China, both methods are constrained so an alternative scheme is used - human
rights and democracy by an America disdaining both at home or abroad.
Nonetheless, in 2004, the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights and Labor targeted China on these issues with millions in funding,
headed by a right-wing conservative, Paula Dobriansky. She's a CFR member,
NED vice chairman, Freedom House board member, senior fellow at the
neo-conservative Hudson Institute, and member of the Project for a New
American Century (PNAC) at which she endorsed attacking Iraq in 1998. Now
she targets China with "soft warfare" strategy that's just as deadly.
Other tools include the Dalai Lama organizations in Tibet, Falun Gong in
China, "an arsenal of (global) NGOs" carefully recruited for their mission,
and, of course, the Western media, including public television and radio in
America and BBC globally.
Weaponizing Human Rights - From Darfur to Myanmar to Tibet
In targeting China, Washington's human rights/democracy offensive focused on
Myanmar, Tibet, and oil-rich Darfur. Called the "Saffron Revolution" in
Myanmar (formerly Burma), it featured Western media images of saffron-robed
Buddhist Monks on Yangon (formerly Rangoon) streets calling for more
democracy. "Behind the scenes, however, was a battle of major geopolitical
consequence" with Myanmar's people mere props for a Washington-hatched
scheme - employing Eurasian Color Revolution tactics:
-- "hit-and-run swarming" mobs of monks;
-- connecting protest groups through internet blogs and mobile
text-messaging links; and
-- having command-and-control over protest cells, dispersed and re-formed as
ordered with no idea who pulled the strings or why - a hidden sinister
objective targeting China for greater geopolitical control and
destabilizing Myanmar to do it.
Also at stake is control of vital sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the
South China Sea with the Myanmar coastline "providing shipping and naval
access to one of the world's most strategic waterways, the Strait of
Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia."
Since 9/11, the Pentagon tried but failed to militarize the region except
for an airbase on Indonesia's northernmost tip. Myanmar rejected similar
overtures - hence its being targeted for its strategic importance. "The
Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, (is) the shortest
sea route between the Persian Gulf and China. (It's) the key chokepoint in
Asia" so controlling it is key. China has close ties to Myanmar. It's
provided billions in military assistance and developed the infrastructure.
The country is also oil-rich, on its territory and offshore.
China is the world's fastest growing energy market. Over 80% of its oil
imports pass through the Strait. Controlling it keeps a chokehold over
China's life-line, and if it's ever closed, about half the world's tanker
fleet would have thousands of extra miles to travel at far higher freight
costs.
In summer 2007, Myanmar and PetroChina signed a long-term Memorandum of
Understanding - to supply China with substantial natural gas from its Shwe
gas field in the Bay of Bengal. India was the main loser after China offered
to invest billions for a strategic China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline across
the country to China's Yunnan Province. The same pipeline could give China
access to Middle East and African oil by bypassing the Malacca Strait.
"Myanmar would become China's 'bridge' linking Bangladesh and countries
westward to the China mainland" trumping Washington should it succeed in
controlling the Strait - a potential geopolitical disaster America had to
prevent, hence the 2007 "Saffron Revolution" that failed.
India's Dangerous Alliance Shift
>From 2005, India was "pushed into a strategic alliance with Washington" to
counter China's growing influence in Asia and to have a "capable partner who
can take on more responsibility for low-end operations" - directed at China
and to provide bases and access to project US power in the region. To
sweeten the deal, the Bush administration offered to sell (nuclear outlaw)
India advanced nuclear technology. At the same time, it bashed Iran for its
legitimate commercial operations, and now Obama threatens hardened sanctions
and perhaps war without year end 2009 compliance with clearly outrageous
demands.
Part II continues Engdahl's important analysis to conclusion.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on
Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
<mailto:lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net> lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
